


Every Year

by secace



Category: Arthurian Literature - Fandom, Arthurian Mythology, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Genre: Christmas, Gen, M/M, and kissing because. ya know. sgatgk, there are a lot of people - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23416378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secace/pseuds/secace
Summary: Every Christmas Gawain drunkenly reenacts the entirety of the plot of Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, and frankly everyone is pretty tired of it.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 23





	Every Year

“Every year,” Agravaine muttered, “every fucking year.”

“I tried to convince him it was the 26th and he had slept through it. Almost worked, too,” Mordred said, “But Lionel made some comment this morning and gave the whole thing away.”

“We should kill him,” Gaheris suggested, sort of joking.

“So it was the evening of the 25th of December,” Gawain said loudly from the front. The older knights, having both been there for this story and forced to hear it again every Christmas, merely sighed and went back to nursing their drinks. The younger knights and squires were watching with rapt attention, however.

“It was the evening of the 25th,” Gawain repeated, thinking for a moment. He was quite drunk at this point. Remembering, he whirled to face Arthur, seated on the raised platform above the hall.

“Uncle this is where you come in!”

Arthur woke from his after-dinner nap with a start, “I what? Huh?”

Gawain sighed. Guinevere rolled her eyes and caught the wine glass her husband has knocked over before it could spill on her dress.

“Alright, that’s fine- Ragnelle could you-”

His wife was already standing on her feet and racing over to the high table. She sat on the table itself and took one of the centrepieces, a woven green wreath, and placed it on her head as a crown, face red with mirth and wine.

“No one may eat until we see a miracle!” She announced, waving her arm in the air imperiously. The actual king was too already-asleep-again to be offended by this mimicry.

“Right,” Gawain agreed, pacing back and forth across the floor like an actor strutting the boards, “So we were all standing around, when, BAM!” He slammed his fist against the wall to echo the sound of the front door flying open. There was crack of the wood splitting and he winced, though he himself was unharmed.

“Then, in rode-” he paused, scanning the faces of the assembled knights, “Priamus, come on,” Priamus rushed over, always ready for any activity that involved Gawain, who, grinning, took off his green cloak and draped it around him.

“In rode the Green Knight,” Gawain said again, gesturing to Priamus over his shoulder as he rushed to the wall where hung-

“Oh, this is a recipe for disaster,” Kay noted, watching in horror as Gawain took down the giant green axe. He lifted it easily despite the fact that it was bigger than he was, and handed it to Priamus, who immediately almost dropped it, surprised by the weight.

“Who are you, to intrude on my feast!” Ragnelle demanded, without prompting.

“Uh,” Priamus looked to Gawain for direction, and finding none, “I'm here to- cut off- your head?”

“No, no,” Ragnelle-as-King-Arthur corrected, “You’re here to get your head cut off. Then you get to return the blow in a year.”

Gawain nodded.

“Right! Uh- I'm here to get my head cut off, and then I’ll give it back?”

Figuring that was close enough, Ragnelle jumped from the table, upsetting Arthurs glass again and startling him briefly awake as the wine spilt on him.

“I accept your challenge, since you all are cowards!” She called, pointing at a few knights in particular.

“Hey,” Agravaine protested, knowing himself well enough not to do so very loudly.

“No, I’ll take the challenge, Uncle!” Gawain broke in excitedly, yanking the axe away from Priamus, and gesturing for him to kneel.

“You’re doing what now?” Arthur sputtered, finally paying attention at his nephew addressing him. His wife told him not to mind it, and set him to dapping at the split wine with a cloth.

Priamus kneeled, now slightly worried that he was actually going to be beheaded. 

“No beheading in the hall or Ill make you clean it up, Gwalchmai,” Kay said, before Gawain could do anything.

“I wasn’t going to!” Nevertheless, he put the axe aside.

“Anyway, I cut off his head, and everyone started kicking it around, but then he got up, and,” Gawain pulled to his feet Priamus, who was thoroughly confused but very okay with being manhandled in this situation.

“And he told me to meet him in a year, and rode out holding his own head!”

Percival gasped in horror. He was by far the most invested in this story.

Gawain took back the cloak and placed it on the edge of the table for later, sending Priamus back to his seat. 

“A year passed, and soon it was Christmastime again,” Gawain narrated, the closest to serious he had been all evening, “I left with-” He looked at Kay, who frowned and shook his head.

“I'm not letting you bring your horse inside. Pick someone to play the horse.”

“I’ll do it! I’ll do it, I’ll do it, I’ll be your horse,” Morholt said, way, way too quickly.

“No thanks,” Gawain grimaced, “anyway I left with Gringolet and after fighting a bunch of sh- a bunch of things-”

“Like what things?” Percival asked curiously.

“Like dragons and bears and wolves. It doesn’t matter,” Gawain said dismissively.

Mordred looked unimpressed, “he just skipped over the only interesting part of the story.”

“None of the story is interesting. And he cut my part out,” Agravaine complained testily. 

Gawain gestured for Priamus to come back up, this time not giving him the cloak, but slipping off his own red tunic and handing it to him. 

“I'm gonna need the noble wife of the host too,” Gawain said, “Hey Lancelot, do you still have-”

“Yes, yes, I do,” Lancelot interrupted him, “Back in a minute,” he rushed out of the room to change.

Gawain started stalling for time by reviewing the plot of Virgils Aeneid, which they were mercifully saved from by the sudden and violent swinging open of the doors. Morgan le Fey walked in, flanked by a pair of black ravens, wearing all black herself, hair unbound and writhing slightly with wild magic. Before anyone could do anything but look panicked, Gawain clapped once, and rushed over.

“Aunt Morgan! This is great timing, you were needed for this scene, we were at the part where we arrived at the castle.”

Slightly bemused, she allowed herself to be led over to the clear floor space between the high and low tables that was the stage for this impromptu play.

“I can’t believe he’s only just gotten to the castle,” Agravaine said, exhausted from both his brother’s antics and so many consecutive minutes of trying to behave politely.

“Is there much more?” Lamorak asked from a few places down, overhearing.

“Shut the fuck up,” Agravaine answered reflexively, “and yes, there is so much more.”

“Good lord,” Lamorak said dryly.

“Good lord,” Gawain said from the front, for a different reason.

“Sorry, I'm back, you can continue now. Hi Morgan,” Lancelot had returned, now wearing his dress from the infamous tournament. It was only half done up in his rush.

“Right,” Gawain said, slightly unfocused. He took another swig of wine from his glass on the table and slipped back into character as narrator and erstwhile hero, “So I arrived at the castle, half-frozen to death, and was greeted by a handsome lord,” pointed to Priamus, “a beautiful lady,” to Lancelot, “ and a cro- another, slightly older beautiful lady.”

“Good save,” Morgan noted.

“So they invited me to dinner and we drank,” He took another generous pull of wine as prop work that everyone would agree he probably did not need, “and the Lord suggested that we should exchange winnings the next day, and invited me to stay till New Years because the chapel was very close to his home. I agreed on both counts, and kissed him goodnight,” Gawain exposited, and kissed a surprised but by no means displeased Priamus, before shoving him back a step, and waving him away from the stage.

Gawain looked back and forth for a moment, wondering what sort of prop would serve the purpose of a bed, but ultimately decided that the best way to indicate repose was to be undressed, and removed his hose and threw them off somewhere into the corner. At this point, he was wearing only a shirt, braies, and the green belt. And several knives. He sat down and gestured for Lancelot to come over.

“The sun rose, and the lady of the castle was in my room, making a concerted effort to seduce me,”

Not knowing how to do that, Lancelot sat down next to him and waited for further instruction. This seemed to be sufficient, because Gawain continued.

“So this was quite the dilemma: reject the lady and give offence to her, or not reject the lady and give offence to her husband? I walked a fragile line of conversation, and in the end, we parted having exchanged a single kiss,” he turned to Lancelot.

“We don’t have to act this part out if you don’t want to,” he granted, quietly.

“No, no, Id hate to compromise the integrity of the story,” Lancelot said, and pressed a quick kiss to his lips, before rising and rushing offstage.

“Good, right-” Gawain nodded and stood, too, “a while later the lord returned, and gave me what he had got that day, which was a deer.”

Priamus, not having a deer, awkwardly mimed the action of giving something. Morgan merely watched this all go down with a smirk.

“So I gave him what I had received that day in return,” Gawain did so.

“There’s an awful lot of kissing in this story,” Lamorak remarked in aside to the younger Orkneys.

“You have no idea,” Agravaine said, staring at the table like it might hold the mysterious to the universe, or at least a way to shut up his brother. If it did he failed to find them, because Gawain continued, acting out the second day much the same as the first, but doubling the number of kisses.

“The third morning dawned,” Gawain mimed blinking awake, then actually blinked in realization, “Oh, I should have done this earlier-”

Off went the belt, which he pressed into Lancelot’s hands.

“Anyway, the Lady wanted to give me something- well yes, obviously-” he said, when laughter erupted from a few older knights, “but something else as well. A belt, which would protect me from all harm, for three kisses on my part. Dishonourable, but I had to accept, didn’t I? I would die the next day if I did not,” sensing himself getting defensive, he dropped it and accepted the kisses, lingering perhaps longer than he had to on them. 

“The polite version of events, remember,” Morgan reminded from just offstage.

“Er- right,” Gawain agreed, almost managing to be embarrassed as he took the belt back, holding it in one hand rather than putting it back on. What little embarrassment he felt didn’t stop him from requiring Morgan to repeat the reminder when Priamus-as-the-Lord returned to exchange their winnings.

“The next morning, I bid goodbye to the Lord and Lady, and the- other Lady,” he kissed the hands of Priamus and Lancelot, and waved awkwardly at Morgan, “and I set out into the snow.”

Doing quick costume work, he threw the green cloak at Priamus, who clasped it hastily as Lancelot was dismissed back to his place at the table.

“It was snowing, and-” he stopped to think about how to represent snowing, getting way too into the staging at this point.

“Oh, holy shit. There goes the shirt. He is going to be completely naked by the end of this story,” Lamorak realized halfway between amazement and shock. Agravaine had his head buried in his hands. Gaheris had left ten minutes ago.

“So I reached the Green Chapel and met the Green Knight there,” Gawain announced, handing the axe back to Priamus. 

“He swung once, and I flinched, then again he swung and I was still, and I said, ach, arsehole,” Gawain gave a universal ’what the fuck’ gesture, and Priamus shrugged helplessly.

“I said, just fucking hit me already,” he continued, clearly losing steam and trying to make up for it in profanity, “So ’e fucking, swung the axe and it didnae- it didn’t hit me-” he corrected, his accent having grown steadily denser over the course of the telling, “well ’e hit me but it was fine, was just a nick.”

He turned and parted his hair to reveal the thin white scar on the back of his neck. There were half-hearted sounds of muttered awe from the collected knights.

Gawain whirled back around and threw the belt at Priamus, who was too startled to catch it and had to bend down and pick it up off the floor.

“And I said, oh fuck you cunt! I don’t want this belt!”

“Uh, Gwalchmai-” Bedivere tried to cut in, sounding torn between laughter and horror.

“Leave off,” Gawain brushed him off, “Anyway, ’e gave the belt back and was like, oh, I love you, and I said I dinna care I'm a fuck off back to Camelot,” taking the belt back, and ignoring another desperate attempt from Bedivere to get his attention, Gawain, failing any clothes but braies to tie the belt around, tossed it onto the table and took another swig of wine before turning back to Ragnelle-Arthur.

“So I went back to Camelot and- uh some people said some shit I cannae remember, and that’s. That’s the story.”

“Gwalchmai,” Bedivere pleaded. 

Gawain frowned, “What?”

“There’s a huge Green Man in the courtyard asking for you.” 

“I see,” Gawain took another drink, placed the glass carefully down on the table, “oh, goodness.”

And promptly passed out.

**Author's Note:**

> hewwo all


End file.
